Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

ki4u.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 130 posts

Re: What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

#61

Post by Markoff »

tomjen3 wrote: post #24
stareatgoats wrote: post #18

The site is down so I can only speculate what it recommends. Whatever it is, I suspect it is not a list of suggestions for how to avoid nuclear disasters altogether. Because that is simply not in vogue. It seems we must all accept as something inevitable to have the specter of millions dead, if not billions, if not life as we know it, hanging over our heads for time eternal. Because we as humans are seemingly only en…

Russia smashed a missile 10km into Poland, killing 2 and wounding some more. Poland is a NATO member, so that is the likely context of the submission.

Russia also blown up ammo storage in Czechia killing two years ago, guess what happened... And mind that was intentional act far away from Russian or Ukrainian border, not some misguided missile right across border fence.

Re: What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

#62

Post by dekhn »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #3

This reminded me of the better documentary films I have seen, The Atomic Cafe (1982). It is a well-crafted film, with a neat-o formal technique of only using found footage/ audio to describe the history of US atomic-age propaganda. More interestingly to me, it offers a useful commentary about the contradictions between the use of media to present nuclear wars a survivable and possibly necessary event but simultaneous…

Is that Duck and Cover? Yep. My dad grew up in Miami during the cuban missle crisis and he said they watched a lot of those videos.

Re: What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

#64

Post by nicoburns »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #4

Controversial take, but I'm going to be pretty upset if there is a global thermonuclear war and we all die, I am not going to sugar coat it.

> I'm going to be pretty upset

Not if you’re dead, you won’t be. IMO the much worse fate is remaining alive in an apocalyptic hellscape.

Re: What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

#66

Post by int_19h »

pfdietz wrote: post #32
unsupp0rted wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently getting under their desks was on the off-chance their school is far enough away to avoid being incinerated but still close enough for a pressure wave to blow out all the glass in the windows and turn it into projectiles.

This came in handy when that meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk a few years ago. A teacher remembered the training and had everyone hide under desks, and they were spared laceration from the blown-in windows.

In Russia, this kind of training is not a long-gone relic - there's a class in school that's dedicated to survival in various situations, covering all kinds of stuff from emergency first aid to making shelter in the wilds. A subset of that is dealing with anthropogenic disasters, and a subset of that is civil defense. If I remember correctly, we had two hours covering nukes alone - likely targets in the vicinity, what kind of damage to expect where, how to build fallout shelters, when to evacuate etc. So far as I know, this all is still taught in schools there.

Re: What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

#67

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

stareatgoats wrote: post #52
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your alternative? Everyone agreeing to sit round the campfire, hold hands and sing kumbaya? You can’t possibly be this naive. There’s something uniquely frustrating about seeing somebody like you, who has a completely naive and childlike worldview, assuming that YOU are just a genius and everyone else is an idiot.

I may be an idiot, but you seem confused: first you assume that I can not be this naïve, then you conclude that I am? Let me assure you, I'm not that naïve, but I don't presume to have the solution either. I agree that would have been better, but there you go. Maybe if we were more people than the vanishing few that I encounter, maybe then we would have something we could try. More weapons that are likely to start a…

I was expressing disbelief.

As I suspected, you have no alternative.

Re: What to do if a nuclear disaster is imminent [pdf]

#70

Post by aussiesnack »

stareatgoats wrote: post #18

The site is down so I can only speculate what it recommends. Whatever it is, I suspect it is not a list of suggestions for how to avoid nuclear disasters altogether. Because that is simply not in vogue. It seems we must all accept as something inevitable to have the specter of millions dead, if not billions, if not life as we know it, hanging over our heads for time eternal. Because we as humans are seemingly only en…

> Because that is simply not in vogue

The hostile responses you've go this do rather demonstrate your point. Building peace in a world bristling with nukes held by independent sovereignties with limited information about each other and often incongruent self-defined 'interests', is indeed a hard problem. Hard problems require work and thought and research to try to solve. If conditions change to make the problem harder, more resources and work are required.

That readers here find that requirement incomprehensible for this specific hard problem is exactly the point. Peacebuilding (as an activity, an actual diplomatic project, not a hope) has indeed fallen out of vogue and out of the collective political imagination. Little being permanent in international relations, it could yet return.

Post reply on HN